Rolf Linkohr MdEP

	Rolf Linkohr Member of the European Parliament

	Disarmament must form part of Europe’s security policy Dr Rolf Linkohr, Member of the European Parliament January 2000 Summary The time is ripe for a new attempt at controlling and eliminating weapons of mass destruction. Atomic, biological and chemical weapons continue to pose great environmental and proliferation risks, although international agreements provide for their limitation and/or abolition. The countries of the former Soviet Union give particular grounds for concern. There is a lack of money and technical background. For these reasons America’s President Clinton launched a call a year ago to join a new initiative (Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative – ETRI). My proposal is that the European Union should make an independent contribution to this initiative. Disarmament is also a test case for the Common Foreign and Security Policy. The European Parliament should make use of the possibility it succeeded in having adopted in the conciliation procedure on the Fifth Research Framework Programme, whereby it can call on the Commission to take appropriate steps towards the elimination of weapons of mass destruction. The Council, Commission and Parliament should agree on suitable measures with a view to a high-level conference. Parliament only has very limited powers on security questions, but it can take political initiatives. It does, after all, have the possibility of influencing expenditure policy via the budget. The disarmament process is in crisis Disarmament has lost its momentum. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, there is not enough money. For example, in Russia only 20-30% of the weapons that should have been eliminated in accordance with international agreements have been destroyed, because of insufficient funds. Secondly, the technical prerequisites are lacking. As a result the danger of atomic, biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction spreading is increasing. The risk also increases as the number of local or regional conflicts grows. The number of states now working openly or in secret on novel weapons systems is greater than at the time of the Cold War. We may also increasingly assume that internationally organised terrorist groups are taking advantage of opportunities to come into possession of weapons of mass destruction. If Europe’s wants to increase its own and the world’s safety it must develop a policy which places more emphasis on disarmament. Since the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaty amendments, the European Union not only has the task, but also the instruments with which to carry it out: the Common Foreign and Security Policy covers all matters relating to the security of the Union, which include disarmament, even though this concept is not mentioned specifically in the Treaty. But disarmament is little talked about. Even amongst the politically aware members of the public it is no longer a topic of conversation. The concern of the eighties was clearly followed by the insouciance of the nineties. The problem is pushed out of sight by the optimism engendered by the international agreements prohibiting the manufacture and use of biological and chemical weapons. In addition, the United States and Russia have stopped making uranium and plutonium that could be used for military purposes. The 1996 nuclear test ban treaty is also encouraging, even though the United States has not yet ratified it. All of this creates the impression that the problem is solved or, at least, the situation so much improved that it no longer needs to be a major political issue.This impression is unfortunately false. It is true that the superpowers have stopped producing materials that can be made into weapons, but this does not mean that the materials produced earlier have disappeared. The supply of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) is estimated at 1 700 tonnes worldwide, from which several hundred thousand warheads could be built. Comparable figures for plutonium are not available. Biological and chemical weapons have not disappeared as a result of international agreements either. In Russia alone 40 000 tonnes of chemical weapons are stored, financial and technical reasons having so far prevented their destruction. The environmental risks alone would be reason enough to do away with these threatening materials as quickly as possible. But the risk of proliferation of weapons and the knowledge needed to build them is greater still. And the disarmament agreements do not mean that the great powers will stop developing new weapons systems. New atomic weapons and delivery systems are being developed which are purpose-built and more accurate than traditional weapons. Computer simulation, laser fusion and testing of nuclear weapon components in combination with knowledge from atomic physics mean that atomic weapons can now be developed in secret. No big bang is needed to prove that a weapon is capable of functioning. But this also means that there is no longer any way of checking whether a country is engaged in developing any given weapon. It is certainly true that spending on armaments dropped worldwide in the nineties. The Stockholm peace research institute SIPRI estimates that in 1987 the Soviet Union spent the equivalent of US$257 billion on arms. Russia in 1997 spent only US$24.1 billion. Arms spending also went down in Europe and the United States. But these figures distort our view of the facts. Rearming follows disarmament. And the deadly legacies of the past have not been erased. What remains to be done in Russia alone? There are serious problems in Russia. According to Russian information, the following still have to be destroyed: - 90 intercontinental missiles launchable from underground silos - 452 ballistic missiles from nuclear submarines - 511 ballistic liquid-fuel missiles - 410 intercontinental solid-fuel missiles - 536 liquid-fuel ballistic missiles from submarines - 36 railway missiles - 253 road-transportable missiles - 30 decommissioned nuclear-fuelled submarines - 120 multi-purpose submarines. In addition to this, seven new installations need to be built if all chemical weapons are to be destroyed. As mentioned earlier, a total of 40 000 tonnes of chemical weaponry needs to be done away with. In addition, there is a chemical weapons factory to be destroyed and nine further installations to be demilitarised and converted to civilian use. In the nuclear area, the intermediate coastal depots for spent fuel rods from the stocks of the navy in the north and the Far East need to be disposed of, as they present a serious risk. Furthermore, the infrastructure must first be put in place for all these missiles, missile fuels, nuclear submarines, fuel rods and nuclear fuels to be transported, stored and managed safely. A particular problem is posed by 50 tonnes of plutonium no longer needed for military purposes. This quantity will, incidentally, increase when further disarmament programmes – START II and START III – are begun. The engineers and scientists from the closed down arms factories need alternative employment in the civil sphere. Given that Russian scientists earn a maximum monthly average wage of $80 to $100, one can imagine how easily they could be recruited by third countries who are themselves interested in building weapons of mass destruction. The Russians estimate the cost of disarmament as at least US$13 billion, a sum they could never possibly raise. The cost of destroying their chemical weapons alone is estimated at US$3.5 to 5 billion. There are also costs to be paid in the former Soviet republics, which are now independent. In Kazahkstan many hundreds of nuclear tests were carried out. It – or rather, an island in the slowly drying up Aral Sea – was also the test laboratory for biological weapons. To overcome this legacy is far beyond the capabilities of the young republic. The same goes for the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics. By way of comparison: The USA, by its own reckoning, will be hard pressed to eliminate its own stores of chemical weapons by 2007, as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) prescribes. And the amount set aside for this purpose – US$12.4 billion – will not be enough. The technical and financial problems are obviously greater than had been expected. Further costs will be occasioned by the programme for the elimination of the other chemical materials stored for the purpose of manufacturing the weapons, e.g. binary weapons and installations or weapons of earlier manufacture stored in final depots. Their elimination will, according to American estimates, cost a further US$15 billion and take at least another 40 years. This comparison is useful in that it sheds light on the Russian estimates. They are presumably far too low, even taking lower wage costs into account. And the technical problems in Russia cannot be smaller than in the United States. Taken all in all, it will take generations of work to eliminate the legacy of the last decades, and then only the worst residues will be gone. And the cost may well amount to tens of millions of Euro. Wars are being waged now with weapons of mass destruction Chemical weapons were used in large numbers in the war between Iran and Iraq. In the Gulf War more British and American soldiers died after than during the fighting, leading to the assumption that Iraq used chemical weapons. The inspection of Iraq by the UNSCOM mission in the nineties led to the discovery and destruction of thousands of tonnes of weapons, and it is still unclear whether all the weapons and depositories were found. In North Korea large quantities of chemical and biological weapons are stored, and are presumably still being developed and produced. The United States has made one billion US$ available for the years 1999-2003 for counter-measures, including vaccination of soldiers against anthrax. According to reports by a Russian intelligence officer who fled to the West, bringing a sample of a totally new nerve gas, this weapon was already used in the first Chechen War, which would explain a number of mysterious deaths. What has been done so far? The USA, in the framework of its Cooperative Threat Reduction Programme, also known as the Nunn-Lugar Programme, has provided the most resources: US$3 billion since 1992. Inter alia, containers and special railways wagons for the transport of rocket fuel and equipment for the destruction of nuclear-powered submarines and intercontinental missiles have been supplied, intermediate storage for nuclear materials built, and a factory built in Schuchye in the Kurgan region for the destruction of chemical weapons. Funding of US$135.5 million for the factory in Schuchye has, however, since been stopped by the US Congress. The money was used to pay for the return to Russia from the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan of nuclear explosives, in order to free these states of nuclear weapons. In October 1997 the USA also bought 21 MiG-29C fighters from Moldavia in order to prevent them from being sold on to anywhere else. In the same year the American Vice-President Al Gore and Russia’s Prime Minister Chernomydrin signed an agreement whereby Russia would cease plutonium production in three Siberian atomic reactors by 31 December 2000. Half of the sum of US$150 million made available for this is to be used for the development of new reactors. Canada, Japan, South Korea and a few non-EU European countries such as Norway are participating in the international programmes or financing projects of their own. In 1993 the German Government approved DM 51.2 million for the elimination of chemical weapons in the town of Gorny in the Saratov region. The Netherlands, Sweden and Finland are also providing assistance in the order of a few million Euro. The EU (Council decision of 21 May 1997) has made 10 million Euro available for the destruction of chemical weapons. This is being used to support the German project among others. The EU is supporting disarmament through two other international initiatives: the ISTC (International Science and Technology Centre) in Moscow and the STCU (Science and Technology Centre in Ukraine) in Kiev. Since the ISTC came into existence the EU has contributed Euro 65 million to the total cost of US$231 million. Nearly 20,000 scientists, 60% of them former weapon specialists, have been prepared for new civilian jobs over the years with the help of the ISTC. At the moment the ISTC, which – like its Ukrainian offshoot STCU – is cofinanced by the USA, Canada, South Korea, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Japan, as well as the EU – employs 4,000 highly qualified scientists who are carrying out research in practically all branches of science. The EU is now also funding the STCU to the tune of Euro 3 million. Since its founding in 1995 the STCU has employed a total of 4,400 scientists, most of whom also came from the arms development field. The group of participants has now been extended to include Uzbekistan and Georgia. In order to exercise better checks on radioactive materials the EU, in cooperation with the Joint Research Centre, has improved safeguards. Euro 21 million were provided to establish a training centre in Obninsk. 2,000 future inspectors have so far been trained there. In Moscow a laboratory for reference materials was established to make it easier to compare radioactive materials. Further cooperation is going towards the development and joint construction of new detectors. NB: In the framework of the TACIS programme on nuclear safety (Russia and the newly independent states) the Commission made Euro 657 million available over the period 1991-1998. A similar programme endowed with Euro 181 million was available for PHARE (Central and Eastern European countries) over the same period. Both programmes are being continued, with the emphasis on nuclear technology for civil purposes. The European Union is also contributing Euro 80 million to KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development). Under this programme North Korea is ceasing plutonium production, closing down two reactors and a reconversion plant, and in return receiving two 1,000-MW light-water reactors. It must also undertake to allow inspections by the International Atomic Energy Authority in Vienna. As well as North Korea and the United States, Japan and South Korea are involved in the agreement. The overall cost is put at US$5.6 billion. NB: The EU has for years been supporting programmes to detect and eliminate landmines. Now there is also a Humanitarian Demining research and development programme with funding of Euro 15 million. The aim of this is to clear land mines more quickly, more cheaply and without danger to operatives. New tasks in the field of conventional disarmament and armament controls are also now being brought to the EU. A request has come from Latin America to help with handgun controls, because organised and non-organised crime are being encouraged by the largely unchecked proliferation of weapons. The EU will have difficulty in refusing this request if its Latin American policy is to retain its credibility. Conclusions so far The programmes to eliminate residual arms are useful, but far from sufficient. Several generations are still needed to eliminate the remaining stocks of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons under normal conditions. The problems are chiefly technical and financial. To this is added the growing tendency for knowledge and expertise to be more widely disseminated. There are now an estimated 20 countries developing ABC weapons or with the capability to do so. And there are terrorist groups with enough money to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Pressure could then be brought to bear even on the great powers. The greatest problem today, therefore, is not the risk of inadvertent nuclear attack by one of the two superpowers, but the proliferation of arms, possibly through poaching of scientists. Weapons control, secrecy of information and local inspection have thus become urgent security priorities. New initiatives In January 1999 President Clinton launched a new initiative for the accelerated elimination of weapons of mass destruction. ETRI (Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative), designed as a multinational arrangement, is intended to help the former states of the Soviet Union to control their weapons stocks better, or to eliminate them. The American Government has applied to Congress for US$4.5 billion over the next five years. US$610 million have already been approved for the financial year 2000. In June 1999 representatives from 27 countries met in Brussels to discuss the American proposal. A follow-up conference was held in The Hague on 30 November 1999. The issues are: - nuclear safety (elimination of atomic weapons and their carriers and of fissionable material, i.e. plutonium and highly enriched uranium) - destruction of non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction (destruction of biological and chemical weapons and improved export controls) - scientific and technical non-proliferation (employment of scientists and technicians on civil research subjects) - help in reducing the size of armies. ETRI takes as its starting point the observation that efforts so far have been insufficient. A new, internationally coordinated and funded approach is therefore needed. The participants in ETRI are nation states. The EU is not involved in ETRI. The EU has not so far put forward proposals of its own. However, there is now a CFSP (Common Foreign and Security Policy) Working Party on disarmament, non-proliferation and export of conventional weapons. In the first half of 2000, for example, talks are due to take place with the Ukraine on cooperation on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons. On 4 June 1998, at the G8 summit in Cologne, a ‘Common European Strategy for Russia’ was adopted, with the focus on not passing on weapons of mass destruction and environmental protection. A group of Italian scientists used this decision as an opportunity to set up a European Nuclear Cities Initiative (ENCI). This is intended to assist scientists in the ten ‘nuclear cities’ with storing nuclear weapons safely, or eliminating them. According to Russian estimates, there are still some 732 000 people living In these cities, which were secret during the lifetime of the Soviet Union, 127,000 of them working in the strategically important nuclear sectors. 5,000 scientists among them are extremely familiar with the construction of nuclear weapons. Since the Nuclear Ministry in Moscow will be ceasing to employ a number of them in the next few years for financial reasons, there is a danger of their being poached by states which are themselves interested in developing nuclear weapons. Since 1992 there has, it is true, been an American initiative – the Initiative for Proliferation Prevention – to support these scientists, but as a recent report by the American General Accounting Office states, only a few projects have been implemented. Incidentally, only Norway supported this initiative. The EU did not participate, a fact that was criticised by the Italian ENCI initiative. These examples show that the European Union is already taking part in disarmament measures in the context of the G8 strategy. Considerable amounts of tax revenue have been and are being spent on eliminating weapons of mass destruction and improving the Safeguard System. However, there is no Commission communication on the subject and no general plan. There are no proposals from the Commission, i.e. from Europe. Instead EU measures have followed American initiatives, with no particular profile being given to its own contribution. It is not discernible to what extent the Member States are in agreement with the Union on individual initiatives. The European Parliament has not placed any great emphasis on disarmament either. This is certainly attributable partly to its limited powers in the area of foreign and security policy. To this is added the fact that the Euratom Treaty, to which all nuclear activities are subject, gives Parliament no participatory role. It does, however, have influence where the budget is concerned. And since all the initiatives mentioned so far are funded out of the European budget, Parliament is not simply an onlooker, but can indeed influence the shaping of disarmament policy. Proposal for a European initiative on disarmament with respect to weapons of mass destruction Despite the abovementioned initiatives, the risks of greater proliferation of weapons of mass destruction persist. Indeed, they have increased. Residual stocks are also an environmental and security time bomb. So the time for a new approach is ripe. Since neither the Commission nor the Council are planning a comprehensive evaluation and initiatives on disarmament, Parliament should take a political initiative. President Clinton’s proposal proves that the time is ripe for new endeavours. The Europeans have only two possibilities. Either they join in with a contribution of their own, or they make fools of themselves. One opportunity for an initiative by Parliament is offered by a clause in the Fifth Research Framework Programme, which Parliament succeeded in having adopted at the time on my own initiative.[1] Under this clause the European Parliament can require the Joint Research Centre to carry out certain research activities relating to the legal, financial and practical aspects of chemical and bacteriological substances. The somewhat involved text was intended at the time to prevent, on the one hand, a clear requirement to give technical and scientific support to disarmament from being incorporated in the Fifth Framework Programme (the Council was against it and the Commission unenthusiastic) and, on the other, to meet Parliament’s wish for concrete measures. Be that as it may, Parliament can use this clause to call for an initiative from the Joint Research Centre, i.e. from the Commission. This possibility should now be used. The text in question did not mention nuclear activities because it applied only to the non-nuclear part of the research programme, on which Parliament, as the legislative body, is involved in making decisions. The nuclear research programme, on the other hand, comes under the Euratom Treaty, which provides for no involvement by Parliament. But Parliament’s initiative should nevertheless not exclude the nuclear side of disarmament. Atomic weapons are by definition weapons of mass destruction. Secondly, as has already been shown, the EU is already involved in nuclear disarmament measures. I therefore propose that the Committee on Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defence Policy and the Committee on Budgets urge the Commission to carry out a comprehensive review of disarmament policy, combined with instructions to the Joint Research Centre in Ispra to organise a representative international conference on this subject. In the light of this event, initiatives should then be taken in agreement with Russia and the USA on controlled disarmament in respect of weapons of mass destruction and/or their elimination. This initiative should lead in the European Parliament to a report and debate on security policy and technical aspects of disarmament in respect of weapons of mass destruction. Examples of practical contributions that could be made by the European Union Assuming that the European Union and the Member States agree on a planned programme on disarmament and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, an independent EU contribution could include the following measures: - improving the safeguards system The EU already has experience of this – the Euratom authority in Luxembourg has, after all, been supervising civil use of fissionable material since the inception of the Euratom Treaty. There has also been collaboration with Russia, although the Council has only provided limited resources for this in the past. - Elimination of stores of chemical weapons The work which has been begun by the German Government should be put on a broader basis. Above all, installations should quickly be built in which the 40 000 tonnes of weaponry could be harmlessly destroyed. - Elimination of biological weapons In order to do this, a complete inventory would first have to be made with Russian help. Installations would also have to be built for the elimination of the material. - Elimination of environmental damage The European Union has also accumulated a great deal of experience in this area in the countries of the former Soviet Union. Programmes have been in existence for years, but they often suffer from cumbersome bureaucracy and, above all, inadequate funding. The EU, in the context of task sharing with the USA, could make the reversal of environmental damage from civil and military activities a focus of activity. - Elimination of plutonium There is already an American-Russian agreement on the elimination of highly enriched uranium (from which weapons can be made), whereby the Russians ‘dilute’ the uranium and sell it to the USA, where the ‘de-enriched’ uranium is used to make fuel rods for light-water reactors. But no solution has yet been found for plutonium. Final underground storage is ruled out because Russia does not want it. A long-term three-step strategy is a possible solution: in the short term, use as mixed oxide (MOX) in suitable light-water reactors; in the medium term, use as a fuel in the new type of high-temperature reactors; and, in the long term, transmutation into long-life militarily unusable isotopes. Europe has knowledge and expertise in all three areas. Europe is skilled in dealing with MOX. At the moment 36 European reactors are licensed to use MOX, 31 of which do so. 5-7% of the plutonium from civil reconversion plants is mixed with uranium and used as oxides in fuel rods. Russia would have to convert its reactors to MOX, however. It is not clear whether it wants to do so, or whether it wishes to use European expertise. There is already, however, a French-German-Russian cooperation project in the MOX area called AIDA MOX, which Italy is also going to join. The EU makes a contribution of Euro 2 million to this (1998-2000). There is already American-French-Japanese-Russian cooperation in the area of high-temperature reactors. Under the name GT – MHR (Gas Turbine – Modular Helium Reactor) an inherently safe reactor is currently being developed, which could also be built in a few years’ time. The Russian Government published a White Paper on this in 1998. In the framework of its Expanded Threat Reduction Initiative (ETRI) the United States has budgeted US$200 million for the elimination of plutonium. In addition, it contributes an annual US$5 million for the development of the GT – MHR reactor. Transmutation, on the other hand, is still at the research stage. Rapid neutrons have to be available to convert plutonium into short-lived isotopes. The model of an upstream proton accelerator proposed by the Italian Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia sounds convincing, but is still a long way from being practicable. It could, however, be used one day to reduce the half-life value of radioactive waste to a tolerable mass. It should definitely be developed, therefore. [1] Protocol of 15.12.1998, Fifth RTD Framework Programme (1998-2002), A4-0493/98, Decision concerning the fifth framework programme of the European Community for research, technological development and demonstration activities (1998-2002) </Titre><DocRef>(3626/98 - C4-0646/98 - 97/0119(COD))(Codecision procedure – third reading): As regards Am. 29 on research concerning disarmament of chemical and biological weapons, the Commission made a statement to the effect that Parliament can request the JRC to conduct research ‘on the legal, financial and practical aspects of extending RDT activities under the EC Treaty to the methods and technologies for dealing with chemical and bacteriological substances’."